Building 'Reb' - by thedragonrampant

With permission from the author, thedragonrampant, and from one of the forum admin, Jenn, here is a long piece (10,742 words) that I felt should be posted and discussed here. The essay has been broken up to fit in forum posts but is to be one single piece.

Authorship should always be attached to it. Many, many thanks to thedragonrampant for this essay.

Enjoy!

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Building 'Reb' - by thedragonrampant (April 2014)


The creation of Reb as an alter ego is something I have spent over half a year trying to figure out. When I speak of the creation of Reb in this fashion, I speak of the character Eric fashioned for himself and referred to himself as on a regular basis. Anyone who has done a little in-depth reading on the case will undoubtedly be familiar with the nickname ‘Reb’ as an alternative for Eric. In some cases, I see Reb being used interchangeably with Eric himself. It is the way most people who knew Eric in life seem to have approached him as well: some knew him as Eric, some as Reb, some as both. But was it really just a nickname? Was the name really just a casual, ‘cooler’ way with which to sign yearbook messages and journal entries? Or was Reb something else entirely for Eric? At first, this piece was simply a vague idea born of the other piece I wrote on him last year. Gradually, over time, the connection Eric had with Reb became more apparent to me and seemed to be woven into the act of NBK seamlessly. I have relied heavily on the use of the available documentation and evidence to be able to recreate what I believe to be a significant key in understanding Eric. This piece therefore took a while to write and put together coherently. I hope to have done it justice.


Eric’s childhood does not see Reb emerge, even though the foundation for the character is undoubtedly rooted in these years. Eric is perceived to be a quiet child back then. He seems to have trailed after his older brother Kevin a lot, which is made apparent in the accounts Eric writes about those years. Kevin is a frequent companion in those stories and Eric’s writing gives off the impression that they got along very well. Kevin seems to have been the more outgoing of the two brothers, which may have made the formation of friendships back in those days a little easier. Eric even admits as much in one of his school essays where he states that he made some friends through Kevin’s help. Eric was “the shyest of them all”, but seemed to have fit in well with his peers. People who knew him before he moved to Littleton describe him as “a normal, sweet guy”. He was a teamplayer when it came to sports and struck the coach as a “timid player” who was afraid to let people down.

The Harris family overall is described as a really regular family. Both parents seem to have been invested in the wellbeing of their two boys. Wayne Harris used to take his boys fishing or play basketball with them on the driveway. The brothers were said to be polite and respectful of adults, including their parents, and described as pleasant kids to have around. There were no indications of problems within the household that could’ve had a serious impact on either of the children. The only thing that stands out from Eric’s childhood years are the many, many moves the family made. They never stayed anywhere for too long. Eric didn’t just move places and schools, but entire states away from the friends he managed to make. For an already shy and timid kid like him, it must have been difficult to keep on starting over and get used to new places and people all the time. Eric frequently mentions missing the places he used to live in and the friends he used to have.

It is not clear if Eric ever spoke with his family about how difficult the moves were for him. His brother always seemed to bounce back from the events with relative ease, going on to make new friends in new places, but Eric seems to have dug his heels in the sand and held onto all the things he was leaving behind. There is a possibility that there was an expectation in the family to just keep your chin up and move on, or just not really giving a voice to the terrifying idea of packing up and moving on. Once they got to Colorado, the brothers were split up in schools and thus also unable to rely on each other the way they’d always done. For Eric, it was likely harder to make friends in this new town than it’d been back when he’d still had his brother to trail after. Littleton is a close-knit community that does not always seem to open up well to those from the outside. Eric would later cite the move from Plattsburgh as one of the most traumatic experiences in his life.

One of the more interesting accounts from his childhood is the mention Eric makes of his reaction to fireworks back when he was a kid. He talks about that he got scared of them during a celebration, possibly around Independence Day, and hid himself in the closet until it was over. It is a far cry from the boy who’d later on be fond of everything loud and explosive, but more important than this is the way it illustrates the coping method Eric had as a young child. He is not one of the children vocalising their distress in words, cries, or screams. He’s not one of the kids freezing up at the noise and remaining in the situation. Rather, he’s the child looking for a place to hide until it goes away. He’s the child attempting to put a barrier of protection up between himself and the thing that terrifies him. Eric writes that he “hid from everyone when I wanted to be alone”. What he did through physically hiding from the world back in the day would, eventually, be something he would do with some of his thoughts and emotions as a teenager.

The first mention of Reb isn’t made in the journal or on any tapes, but saw the light on Eric’s webpages instead. Eric began keeping them in ‘96, but I believe it to be a common assumption that the ‘rebel missions’ he posted didn’t start until perhaps early ‘97. It is in those where we see Reb appear for the first time. Eric opts for the use of the name as a nickname alongside Dylan’s Vodka and Zach Heckler’s Kibbz. Both Dylan’s and Zach’s nicknames were coined for them by friends and stuck with the boys since. It is, however, not very clear where Eric’s nickname comes from. It is entirely possible that it, too, was coined by friends, but it is also highly likely that he chose it for himself. The latter avenue might explain why the name (a shortening of the word ‘rebel’) ties in so neatly with the ‘rebel missions’ it was first used for. The possibility of it being self-chosen is interesting, because that makes the name intrinsically connected with the ideals that Eric himself held in high esteem. It would not be a moniker like Dylan’s Vodka, given by friends for a random reason, but it would be something that’d speak volumes about the person Eric was.

After the massacre, a few of the witnesses were quoted saying that they didn’t even know Eric’s real name. He had always insisted on being called Reb. The nickname had transformed itself into a real name over the course of months following those first rebel missions. Eric was addressed as Reb at work on a constant basis and one of his coworkers is quoted as saying she “knew him as Reb”. Eric signs the “R” of Reb beside his name on work papers, as he would later also carve it into one of his weapons used during the massacre. He signs yearbook entries alternating between Eric and Reb, with Eric writing the friendly standard messages and Reb writing the “kill ‘em all”-thematics. Even his friends seem to have referred to him as Reb on a fair few occasions. Dylan consistently refers to Eric as Eric in the privacy of his own journal, but calls him Reb during the massacre and the last-ever basement tape filmed prior to it. It gives off the impression that the nickname was the preferred name to use for NBK — almost as though the very act of NBK would erase all of Eric and just leave Reb in his place. Reb became seemingly synonymous with the massacre over the course of the final year of Eric’s life.

The first clear warning signs for Reb being more than just a casual reference can all be seen from the year ‘98 onward. It is this year that sees the end of the rebel missions Reb used to belong to. It is in this year, also, where Eric first expresses his own concern about what is going on inside his mind. The end of ‘97 saw a pretty big argument between Eric and Brooks Brown that eventually even involved law enforcement. The explosive rage with which Eric reacted to a seemingly normal fight between friends is not normal by any standards, although certainly quite understandable at the same time, and the consistent threats he expressed afterward do not seem to lessen in intensity as time progresses. He is unable to let go of being wronged, of being cornered, and he never makes that first step back to friendly acknowledgement of Brooks on his own. The ongoing rift between Brooks and himself would not be the last time Eric was confronted with law enforcement in an influential position on his life.

One event that had a major impact on Eric was the van break-in he committed with Dylan in January of ‘98. His description of the event gives off the impression that the break-in itself was a rash and spontaneous decision. He expresses he “does not have a realistic reason” why they opted for it, and states that he “didn’t think”. To me, the entire affair has always read as something that was born out of boredom. Friday night, nothing to do, hanging out with your best friend, killing time together, and suddenly there’s this van with a lot of random equipment you’re both pretty tech-savvy about in the first place. Ordinarily, of course, you’d ignore it.. but Dylan and Eric had a way of egging one another on, of reinforcing the other’s idea that may or may not have started out as a joke, and it shows in the fact that they broke into the van and dragged everything they found out of there. The boys weren’t such savvy criminals being smart about their loot, and they weren’t so clever once they got caught either. Dylan was the pragmatic one of the two and divided the responsibility for it evenly between them; Eric shoved all the blame for the idea straight onto Dylan. No matter whose idea it was, though, both boys were eventually put into a ‘diversion program’.

The information the boys and their parents had to fill out as a result of the break-in and subsequent diversion program is some of the most illuminating material we have on the psyches of the two. It is a very telling thing that Dylan glossed over his problems completely. He seemed hellbent on making sure nobody really knew what was going on. It was eventually Dylan who surprised everyone. Eric, in contrast, is much more open about what is going on. I have often said that diversion is possibly the only instance where I see a truly honest Eric. It is the time where the plan for the eventual massacre isn’t yet formed at the level it would evolve into. It is the moment where Eric has an instance of self-realisation and knows that whatever’s going on with him isn’t good for him. He reaches out strongly, admitting to aggression and jealousy and almost a dozen other problems, and tells them he is open to receiving help. In the same questionnaire, Eric vaguely scratches a half-mark at ‘homicidal ideation’ and circles ‘more than twice’ when asked if he’s ever had thoughts of suicide.

It is not clear how much Eric’s problems were picked up on in the therapy that followed. In a regular therapeutical setting, homicidal and suicidal ideations are treated with the utmost caution. It is difficult for the therapist to gauge how serious it is and how likely it is that someone would act on it. Even here, the confidentiality agreement a therapist strikes up with the person being treated complicates matters thoroughly. Eric could’ve very easily said he wanted to “hurt people” and it would not have been cause for action unless and until he would begin naming them.  We currently do not have access to the therapy files, which makes it a lot more difficult to see if Eric remained honest throughout. He seems to have been genuinely open to the treatment at first, but there is a marked change in Eric in the first few months of ‘98 all the same.

The other moment that would be the key defining moment for Eric was the failed detonation of the bombs. It is my belief that the boys thought throughout the massacre in the library that the bombs could still go off any second. They ventured down into the commons with the thought that they’d enable the detonation through shooting at them or doing something else to them. It is, admittedly, Dylan tinkering with them and taking more risks with them than Eric. Yet, it is Eric who kneels down on the stairs in plain sight of the security camera and attempts to detonate them from a distance. He knows, perhaps, that it is a long shot. The moment captured later, of him grabbing his bag and turning to walk down the stairs, is one that does not speak of defeat, not yet, but by that time his thoughts must have been racing at a million miles an hour already. The plan Reb had devised so very carefully centred around those bombs. Reb didn’t want another damn school shooting committed by what he perceived to be a weak spirit taking out only a few. No, he wanted to be remembered for destruction on a much larger scale. Reb wanted to go out with a bang quite literally and it must have grated on him that the grandness of his plan did not work out the way he had envisioned.

Even the ‘victory drink’ takes on new meaning in this regard. It is not just the victory of being in power that Eric raises the cup to, nor is it just a salute to his comrade in arms. It is the last-ever attempt to claw back to Reb, to let himself feel what was achieved that day, to not sink back into the despair of being such a fucking abject failure. It is the knowledge that he is never walking back out of the school alive, that it could all be over any given second, and that these final moments are again spent feeling what he’d spent the best part of the year avoiding. There is a brief, uplifting moment when they do finally get one of the bombs going enough to start a small fire — the boys may have thought it’d take and eventually explode, seeing as they left the commons briefly straight after. Then, of course, the fire died out and no chain reaction happened. It is that moment that is the most definite: everything that was wanted did not happen the way it should have, and the thing they’d be remembered for was not the grand moment it could have been.

There is dejection in Eric as he walks up the stairs that final time. There are the racing thoughts again, no longer calmed by the therapeutic levels of medication in his system at the time, and there come all the other things he denied himself. There maybe even comes the question if it was worth it, in the end. But larger than this, larger than anything, is the fact that he is alone again. Reb has nothing to cling to now that everything backfired and there is no grand showcase of power. There were seven minutes of lording his might over others, sure, and perhaps the final walk to the library was a reminder to himself that there was a tiny thing in all of this Reb would’ve considered to be success. But Eric walks alone, now, and there is nothing left that is strong enough to bring Reb back to the foreground. Not even the shoot-out with the cops would have been angering enough. The exchange is brief and doesn’t amount to much. There is no heart in it. No fight left.

It is not Reb who rises and walks away from the windows. It is not Reb who kneels down in front of the bookcase. The war in Eric’s mind is over for now. The last moments of his life are the clearest they have ever been. It is just Eric being alone with every single part of himself. The anger and outward hatred Reb showcased has faded. There is no more need to externalise the character he devised as a safety zone. It is Eric rising to walk away from the outside world forever. It is Eric kneeling down in front of the bookcase. It is Eric who can’t stand to be alone with himself. It is Eric who can’t handle, was never able to handle, all the emotions and hurt coming to the foreground. It is Eric deciding to stop himself short before the war he waged on himself continues again. It is Eric who knows that the only escape left to him now that all the rest has failed is something that will finally bring him something akin to peace. He said once that he didn’t know what was in the afterlife. His ideas about it seem to have varied from ‘nothing’ to ‘getting to look at life’s biggest mysteries’. It is uncertain for Eric where he will end up after, and yet it is an option more preferable to him than staying alive.

When it is time to die, Eric does not hesitate. He chooses the most unflinching manner of death possible. When he pulls the trigger, he aims directly for his head. Eric drops to the floor and is gone in an instant. The mind that brought him so much turmoil is silenced abruptly.


The idea that it was only the existence of Reb that brought Eric to commit to NBK is a faulty statement to make, even after examining the rollercoaster and inner turmoil leading up to that final day. There is an ownership of the murderous act inside Eric himself that cannot be erased or excused through his creation of the alter ego. The slippery slope he found himself on was one he, at times, certainly acknowledged and attempted to work with. At first, there is a sense of wanting to regain control over his emotions and reactions. Over time, it grows into a feeling of resignation and becomes a willful attempt to be that rebel kicking back at the world consistently and permanently. Eric commits to the idea of NBK with the thought that there is nothing else that could make an equally powerful statement. In that, perhaps, he was correct.

The creation of Reb was initially something to share with friends. A nickname that sounded ‘cool’ for all the stuff they got up to together. Over time, Reb evolved into the personification of everything Eric could not express freely in everyday life. Reb became the coping mechanism that eventually grew over his head entirely. Yet, the responsibility for Reb lies in Eric alone. The existence of the alter ego is not a free pass out of the terrible destruction caused by a young man, nor is it an excuse through which to diminish Eric’s own part in the act of NBK. Rather, it is another vantage point through which to see Eric and the years that led up to that final day in April. It’s a different look at a very, very complicated individual whose choices in life still have an impact on the world fifteen years later.



- by thedragonrampant (April 2014) -

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Great Post !!


Quoted from Eric

"This is just a two man war against everything else"

I also enjoyed this. Here are some random thoughts I had in response.

In my opinion, Columbine was Eric's attempt to live up to the fantasy version of himself.

And the creation of Reb was a way of ensuring that when the time came, he had no Eric to go back to.

Even then, he left himself escape hatches. I think girls were an escape hatch. If he could've gotten one, he could have saved face to Dylan and himself. The Marines, too.

But neither happened. So when he was sitting in the car, 11:17 having come and gone, he had a choice--are you Reb or Eric?

lasttrain wrote:

But neither happened. So when he was sitting in the car, 11:17 having come and gone, he had a choice--are you Reb or Eric?

Same thing with Eric in the library. Would Reb wanted to die a heroic death by getting taken down in a hail of bullets, or blow his head off?

Yeah I agree JDM, and I also think the shootout with the campus police officer might have been an attempt to pull the plug early.

Ultimately I think the ammo was running low and the chance of getting merely injured was too high.

There are just so many things in this essay to sink our teeth into . Everybody would probably take from this piece something different, depending on what you read before and what you think. To me, these are the highlights:

-It’s interesting to note how the building of the Reb persona may come from Eric war-games as a child. He describes how he would play with his brother and friends in one school essay, saving the day. Really, the Reb-persona may have created terrible havoc once it was fully implemented but, at the beginning, it is truly a long-term, old coping mechanism for Eric. Maybe Reb if he had been fully integrated, would have some gold, some good heroic qualities to provide Eric with. But that’s not what happened. Which bring us to the ideas of the Shadow-self, a truly fascinating connection to make here.

-I just find the idea of the Shadow-self here so well-developed. It comes from Jungian analysis. We know that the Shadow can be integrated in the conscious personality. But in Eric there is a split Eric VS. Reb that forms, all the energy of Reb is never integrated consciously and Reb (the Shadow self) becomes the guiding force, creating complete mayhem in the end.

-Reb built up over time and the essay shows the progressive and uneven development of that creation. Even in the diary and with the transcript of the basement tapes, we can see that sometimes the Reb-persona, all war-like and angry, cracks open to let Eric through in certain entries, in certain videos. Even in the diversion papers, he’s still pretty honest when it comes to confiding he has homicidal and suicidal ideas. It is indeed really surprising when you think this young guy was planning a mission of destruction.

-We don’t talk about the effect his medication had on him too often but here, we can pinpoint a time when Eric was transition from one meds to another and during that time (May-July 1998), the idea of NBK is mentioned clearly and by name for the first time. We can see the alteration of Eric’s mind, a kind of back-and-forth between Eric and Reb while his medication is being adjusted. I had never heard of that significant period of time that could have had such an effect on the creation of Reb, maybe even encouraging it by wrecking his brain through lack of sleep and hormonal disruption through meds.

-It’s enlightening to see the Reb-persona analyzed to this extent, very precisely through journal entries and other material, to see Eric essentially become the mask and Reb bubbling right there under the surface but taking so much space.

-I've always wondering long and hard about those last three months of journal-silence from Eric. What must have been going through his mind? A battle was waging and we will never know if a different turnout could have happened then. Eric was losing ground but he does make an appearance here and there in Eric's journal and the last two Basement Tapes (as implied by the partial transcripts). I'll always wonder how Eric thought his ideas had changed during that period.

-Until the very end, that is. When I read the ending of this essay, I had a melancholic feeling seeing how the Eric-self is coming back to the forefront, having to face in only a few minutes what he must have felt was his personal failure. Having to face one last time his vulnerable self once the wrath was spent and see himself not as a victorious Reb as created in his mind. Even if Dylan was there, Eric was in his own world that day and ultimately, he did not wait for Dylan to die. He died alone and there was no Reb left, just Eric.